Endgame VIII: Dreams
Welcome, and congratulations on having found this special, hidden endgame! The main thing that strikes many people when visiting this site is that it bears next to no resemblance to the vast majority of the internet. As a personal homepage, it seems almost ridiculous. After all, it contains next to no practical information, and what is said about myself in it is hidden in obscure places – literally buried in an enormous maze. Why then, would I do such a thing? Why especially would I take six years to put it together? (Though the construction process was far from constant, my refusal to let the project die, in fact, was.)
The answer lies in a matter of perspective. The best way to think of the website is as a sort of waking dream. I did not intend to tell a coherent story. By definition, the site is cyclic. In fact, getting to this point without help requires either a clever eye or an almost extraordinary sense of whimsy. Rather, the site is a collection of loose images, tied together by themes, but allowed to take dramatic swings in feel and tone over relatively short periods of time. Transitional material is maintained – in fact – it is almost the entirety of the site. In addition, the same areas will repeat, sometimes with different beginnings or endings, but always in a piecemeal “forced forward” manner. (Using the “Back” button on your browser is highly discouraged.) This, in my experience, is one of the defining characteristics of sleep.
All of the pictures contained here are works I have taken for artistic purposes. The vast majority of them I filed away as lacking any potential for artistic expansion. Put directly, I will not likely make a painting of any of these pictures. However, they were all taken with artistic intent, and all of them – no matter how unusual – are in some way revealing of my own taste. In addition, the locations presented here, unrecognizable though many of them are, are universally important to me. This is not just a collection of pretty (and ugly) pictures. This is a collection of images taken from places very familiar to me. Many, if not all, people who wander through this site long enough to find this page will be themselves very familiar with many of the locations presented here. I say this for the simple reason that I assume no one but my closest friends will be interested enough in my personal website to make it this far. I would guess, despite that, that people will be able to place at most a handful of the pictures, even if they have been to some of these places dozens of times.
That said, I invite you to look at this website in this way: a collection of images deeply familiar to myself presented in the style in which I am used to dreaming. Enjoy then, this garden – and know that when walking here, I give you the chance to come as close as I am able to letting you inside my inner mind.